Your Chariot Awaits (34 page)

At the highway I almost collided with a sheriff's car turning onto the gravel road. Oh, happy day! I wanted to jump out and embrace them. But the two deputies didn't appear to be looking for grateful hugs.

They slammed to a stop in front of me, blocking the road, and, headlights still blazing, jumped out with guns drawn. I couldn't get the window down, of course, so I opened the door.

“Freeze!” one cop yelled.

How about that?
I thought irrelevantly.
They really
do
say,
“Freeze!” Just like on TV.

I stayed right where I was and raised my hands. “You've got the wrong person!” I yelled. “The killers are back there!”

They looked at the shot-up windshield, then back at me. Puzzled. Wary. Suspicious.

“Are you hurt?” one officer asked as he approached, gun still drawn.

How come
I'm
suddenly the target
du jour?

“I'm okay. It's bulletproof—bullet-resistant—glass. You got here quicker than I expected.”

“We happened to be near Bogg's Junction when the call came in. But I understood the call was from a male.”

“That was Mr. Findley. It's a long story. He told me he wanted me to drive him to a meeting—”

“Step outside, please,” he interrupted.

“But—”

“Keep your hands up.”

I fumed at the delay, but I followed orders. One of the officers yanked the rear door open and peered inside. “No one else in here.”

“There are two guys, well, three, actually, back there in the woods who were shooting at me.” I started to gesture toward the wooded hills, realized that might not be wise, and jerked my head instead.

“The call came from a man who said he and a woman were under attack by two gunmen. Where's he?”

“That was Mr. Findley. He's an executive at F&N, but he turned out to be one of the gunmen.” I pointed to the spider-web on the passenger's side of the windshield. “He did that.”

“We need to see your vehicle registration and driver's license.”

I groaned. Protocol. If criminals weren't in hot pursuit, protocol came first. Which was a complication, because I didn't have anything to show I owned the limo, and it still had Uncle Ned's Texas plates. But I dragged out my driver's license and gave them a high-speed rundown on Uncle Ned and Mr. Findley and the goons and what I was doing out here in the limo.

Both deputies looked more suspicious—and maybe confused—than impressed by my story. I suppose it's not every day a wild woman in a shot-up limo comes barreling out of the woods. Mud to my ankles probably didn't upscale my image.

Sudden inspiration.

“I know Detective Sergeant Molino. You can ask him about me!”

On second thought, maybe that wasn't such a good idea. DDS Molino might just tell them to slap on the handcuffs and haul me in.

But I'd started this, so I plunged ahead. “Tell him I know who killed Jerry.”

“Jerry?” one officer repeated.

“Detective Sergeant Molino is investigating the murder of a friend that happened right here in the limo back in Vigland, Jerry Norton.”

“The limousine murder? What's that got to do with all this?”

Everything! I felt momentarily overwhelmed. So much to tell and so little time to tell it. “Mr. Findley—he was Jerry's boss at F&N—hired the two guys who are back there in the woods right now to kill Jerry. And then he arranged all this today to have me killed, too, but so it would look like a robbery . . . but they may all be escaping right now! Because they must have another car—”

I wasn't sure they believed me, but one officer snapped a command. “I think we'd better call for backup.”

The other officer ran back to their car, and I heard the crackle of the radio.

To me the first officer said, “I realize it may look to you as if we're wasting time, but we need a few more facts here.”

So I expanded on what I'd already told them. The officer nodded a couple of times, and I was no longer looking down the muzzle of his gun. But it didn't go back in the holster until two more cars arrived. Big conference then, more squawks from the radio, and then two cars with four officers inside headed into the woods the way I had come. It was almost dark now, and their headlight beams shot strange patterns of light into the trees as they bounced over the rough road. The third car and two officers stayed with me. Although I didn't know if their intention was to protect me or keep me from taking off.

Not that I could. On a squishy-footed tour around the limo I discovered more casualties. Two bullet holes in the trunk, one headlight shot out, and one front tire flat. More than flat. Shredded. One of the bullets must have struck it, and I'd driven all that way with it flat.

The adrenaline rush that had gotten me this far fizzled, and I leaned against the fender. I felt as shredded as the tire.

“May I make a cell phone call?” I asked the closest officer. “I'm going to need some help here.” I motioned to my undrivable vehicle.

“It looks as if there are a couple of slugs embedded in the windshield. We'll probably need to have it towed in so the technicians can go over it.”

That figured. So far, police technicians had spent more time with my limo than I had.

“I'd still like to call someone if it's okay.”

I didn't stop to examine my feelings or make some big decision about whom to call. I just knew that right then I needed Fitz.

THE OFFICER HIMSELF made the call. Apparently, even though they were courteous and sympathetic, they didn't totally trust my wild story about an important executive at F&N shooting at me. But whatever Fitz said to them seemed to meet their approval, and they reported that he would be here as soon as possible.

Then we waited. Full darkness descended. The stars came out. My mind felt as if it had gone numb, overloaded by all that had happened. Mr. Findley, murderer. Maybe he hadn't pulled the trigger, but he was the one behind Jerry's death. The king-pin. But of what?

Stray thoughts on disconnected subjects shot around in my mind. Big Daddy Sutherland wasn't involved. Neither was Elena's husband. So what had her so worked up that she needed to talk to me?

My best black heels . . . my only black heels . . . were ruined. Squishy mud gritted between my toes. Who knew what potent little organisms lived in stagnant mud?

How was I going to get the limo repaired? Maybe the damage was even worse than showed on the surface.

How was Joella going to manage financially now? She had a strong belief that God would meet the needs of those who trusted in Him. Once, when I'd said how much I admired her strength in the face of adversity, she'd said, “I don't have any strength of my own. I just lean on Jesus.” Okay, leaning was fine, but what could God do now? Change her parents' unforgiving attitude?

I had a mosquito bite on my left elbow.

Hurry, Fitz, please hurry.

Fitz didn't arrive, but headlights arced out of the woods. The lone car pulled up next to the car of the deputies that had been waiting with me, headlights blazing, overhead red and blue lights circling. One officer got out. I couldn't see inside the car. Did they have Mr. Findley and his goons back there? Where was the other police car? Would anyone tell me what was going on?

I got out of the limo.

The passenger's door of the deputy's car flew open. “Mrs. McConnell, I'm so glad to see you're okay!”

Mr. Findley headed toward me as if we were long-lost buddies. I backed off.

“What's going on?” I yelled at the officers. “Why isn't he handcuffed or something?”

Mr. Findley stopped short. “Handcuffed? Why would I be handcuffed? Look what they did to me!”

In the beam of the headlights he stretched his pants leg away from his leg and stuck his finger through a bullet hole.

“Look! A couple of inches to the side and they'd have smashed my leg!”

I felt dizzy with the spin he was putting on everything, too flabbergasted to be furious. “What happened to the two guys with the guns?” I asked.

“They took off through the woods. The other deputies are still out searching for them.” He turned to the officers. “Look, I need to make a phone call. I was supposed to be at a meeting with some company executives this evening, but Mrs. McConnell and I got off on this wrong road somehow, and these two ruffians attacked us.”

“He's lying! He told me where to go. He had these guys waiting out there to kill me!”

Mr. Findley drew back his head and looked at me in astonishment. “Mrs. McConnell, what in the world are you talking about? I know you're resentful because we had to let you go at F&N, but—”

“You used to work at F&N?” an officer asked, as if the scales on some unseen balance had just shifted.

“That has nothing to do with this!”

But I could see Mr. Findley was having an effect on them. The bullet hole in his pants leg struck me as a weak substitute for the flesh wound he'd rejected, but it seemed to be working with the deputies. And he sounded so reasonable! Then I thought of something.

“Check his hands! He shot at me.” I pointed to the right side of the windshield. “There'll be . . . whatever it is that gets on your hands when you shoot a gun! I've seen it on TV.”

“Gunshot residue.”

The officers, now clustered around us like gawking sight-seers, gave Mr. Findley speculative looks.

“Yes, gunshot residue! If he's telling the truth, there won't be any. But if it's there—”

“It takes a lab test to identify gunshot residue,” one of the officers said. “Though I suppose we could swab for it.”

No one made any move to do that, however, and Mr. Findley lifted his hands and looked at them in the glare of the police car headlights.

“Well, yes, I suppose there is gunshot residue on them. I did have hold of the gun when it went off—”

“You see? He admits it.”

“—after you ran off and abandoned me out there—”

It was like a bad tennis match, and now the deputies' attention swiveled from Mr. Findley back to me. I could almost hear their thoughts.

You abandoned this guy out there? Ran off and left him helpless
with two guys with guns?

“After she ran off and left, I tried to wrestle a gun away from one of the men. It went off while I was holding it. Then the second guy rushed in and kicked me in the groin.”

He made a protective male gesture and got a collective groan of sympathy from the male officers.
The testosterone fraternity,
I thought in frustration.

“And they got the gun back. That's when one of them tried to shoot me. And almost did.” He stretched out the bullet-holed pants leg again.

“So why didn't they just go ahead and finish the job?” I demanded.

“Because I yelled, ‘The cops are coming!' And they ran off.”

I just stood there, flabbergasted. It sounded so plausible. If I hadn't known it was all a made-up story, I'd have believed him myself.

“But that isn't what happened,” I protested.

I appealed to the two officers to whom I'd given the most complete story of Jerry's murder and what had happened tonight.

“I told you what really happened. They even talked about giving Mr. Findley a flesh wound to make the attack look authentic!”

Mr. Findley shook his head as if baffled by my accusations. “Mrs. McConnell, I know you're under a lot of stress here, but this is ridiculous.”

Big silence, the only sound a lone car passing on the high-way and the call of some night bird back in the woods. The lights on the deputies' car went round and round, disorienting and yet oddly hypnotic. Finally one of the officers spoke.

“We seem to have some . . . ah . . . rather large discrepancies here.”

37

T
here aren't any discrepancies,” I yelled. “He's lying! It was all a setup to have me killed!”

Mr. Findley looked distressed. Oh, he was good. Give the man an Emmy for Most Convincing Crook of the Year.

“Mrs. McConnell, please—”

Then I finally remembered my trump card. “I have the flash drive, Mr. Findley. Jerry's flash drive, remember? He lost it in my flower bed a couple days before you had him killed and his computer equipment stolen. And I found it tonight!”

I saw the look of mixed dismay and fury cross Mr. Findley's usually bland face. But he was facing me, not the officers, so only I had that privilege. Then, as smoothly as if he were adjusting a mask, his expression shifted back to good-ol'-boy bewilderment before he turned to face them, and he played his bluff like a high-stakes poker expert.

He shrugged as if he had no idea what I was talking about. “May I make my phone call now, please?”

“Give us the number, and we'll make it.”

Mr. Findley fumbled in a pocket and brought out a small, leather bound day planner. He opened a page and handed it to the officer.

“See what else he has in his pockets!” I said. “He had directions that took us right out there in the woods where those guys were waiting to ambush us!”

The deputies obviously had their doubts about my version of events, but they weren't playing favorites here.

“Would you empty your pockets please, Mr. Findley?” one asked.

He did. No incriminating scrap of paper.

“Maybe he chewed it up and swallowed it,” I muttered, which earned me lady-you've-been-reading-too-many-spy-novels looks from everyone present.

An officer dialed the number from his own cell phone. He briefly interrogated whoever answered, then handed the phone to Mr. Findley. Then we all heard Mr. Findley give his apologetic “lost” story. Very convincing.

“You did that very well,” I said when he was done. “But I still have the flash drive.”

“I don't know what Mrs. McConnell is trying to pull here, and I have no idea what this flash drive is that she keeps talking about.”